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Friday, September 2, 2011

The Mullahs’ Fear Of Tsunami

By Amir Taher

Eight
months after the start of the “Arab Spring”, the ruling mullahs in Tehran are
still wondering how to respond to a tsunami that is changing the political
landscape of the region.

Initially,
the mullahs, who believe that history consists of a succession of conspiracies,
saw the Arab revolt as a plot hatched by Western intelligence services.

Official
media echoed a view expressed by American conspiracy theorist Noam Chomsky.
According to that view “the Imperialist powers” wanted to change their “Arab
lackeys” who had grown old and out of touch. In the case of Libya, Chomsky
claimed, the US wanted to topple Gaddafi because he had become “unruly”.

The
mullahs’ media reminded their audience that, in 2009, the American “Great
Satan” had also tried to topple the Khomeinist regime with a master-plan
written by US and European philosophers, among them Michael Ledeen and Jurgen
Habermas, with financial support from businessman George Soros.

When
it became clear that the Habermas-Ledeen-Soros trio could not have produced a
firestorm in a dozen Arab countries, the Khomeinist media started looking for
another explanation.

The
most plausible analysis came from Ali Motahari, a member of the Islamic Majlis,
the ersatz parliament in Tehran, who is often sane enough to make one wonder
what he is doing in that bedlam.

He
suggested that, perhaps, Arabs had revolted because they were fed up with
“oppression and poverty.”

However,
that analysis, deemed too dangerous by the regime’s powers-that-be, was quickly
abandoned. The reason was simple. If Arabs had the right to revolt against
“oppression and poverty” how could anyone deny the same right to Iranians who
also suffer from that double whammy?

Things
became more complicated when the revolt spread to Syria, a client state of the
Islamic Republic.

By
June, the official line was that revolt in all Arab countries was legitimate
except Syria. Thus, the conspiracy theory was valid only for Syria that, according
to daily Kayhan, was “punished because it had embraced the teachings of Imam
Khomeini.”

However,
that claim was hard to sustain. Even the most gullible Iranians would not be
persuaded that the only Arab country to have a “perfect government” was Syria
simply because its leaders were on Tehran’s payroll.

Last
month, the mullahs’ media launched a new analysis. This is based on the claim
that the Arab revolt had is inspired by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. According
to this analysis, the American “Great Satan” fomented a revolt in Syria to
counter the tide of Khomeinist victories in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen
among other places.

That
theory, too, is hard to sell. Most Arab youths who spearheaded the revolts were
not even born when the ayatollah seized power 32 years ago. Some may not have
even heard of Khomeini.

And,
yet, in an editorial on 24 August, Kayhan, which reflects the view of the
“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, claimed that what Arab revolutionaries want is a
government based on the Khomeinist model.

Kayhan
certainly knows that even its readers might see that claim as a joke. Why
should Arabs, even if they wanted a religious government, imitate the witches’
brew produced by a semi-literate Iranian mullah rather than developing their
own model?

Anticipating
that question, Kayhan quotes two “eminent authorities” in support of the claim
that Arab revolutionaries want “Walayat al-Faqih” or despotism in the name of
religion.

The
first “authority” is Fahmi Howeydi, presented as “ the leading Egyptian thinker”
who is a frequent visitor to the Islamic Republic.

This
is what Howeydi told Kayhan:” The leadership of Imam Khomeini, and after him,
Imam Khamenehei (sic.) in the past 30 years and Iran’s powerful overcoming of
plots and conspiracies has taught Muslim nations that power, pride,
independence, freedom, scientific advancement, mounting to the summits of
technology, and powerful presence in international domains are all possible...
Today, the Islamic ummah will not swap this model for any other.”

The
second “authority” is someone named as “the leading American thinker Immanuel
Wallerstein”. Kayhan quotes him as saying: “We must lament the fact that our
efforts to change the world faces an insurmountable hurdle in the form of
Walayat al-Faqih in Iran, preferred by most nations to our model of democracy.”

Well,
now you have it. Arabs who have been demonstrating and dying for the past eight
months do not want democracy. What they want is Walayat al-Faqih!

The
Kayhan editorial may be a sign of what psychiatrists call an inversion. This
happens when a victim of ill treatment persuades himself that what he most
fears is, in fact, what he most desires. A woman who is beaten black and blue
starts feeling that the man who beats her loves her dearly.

The
mullahs know that the system they have created is a banal form of despotism
with a thin veneer of superstition sugar-coated as religion. Now dominated by
the military-security machine with the “Supreme Guide” as its public face, The
Islamic Republic, is as much of a police state as Ben Ali’s Tunisia or
Gaddafi’s Libya, not to mention Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.

Howeydi
and Wallerstein know that, relative to its population, the Islamic Republic has
the largest number of political prisoners in the world and that it is second in
the number of people executed each year, after China. No Arab despot created a
cult of personality as scandalous as that built around Khamenei.

Under
the Khomeinist regime even the most senior personalities of the regime are not
safe. Two former presidents, Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami have had
their passports withdrawn and denied the right to travel. Mir-Hussein Mousavi,
the man who, as Prime Minister, led Iran through the eight-year war with Iraq,
is under house arrest. Each time I visit Paris, London or Washington I am
surprised by a wave of new arrivals from Tehran: former Khomeinist officials
fleeing from Walayat al-Faqih.

Mr.
Huweydi’s shining city on the hill is a figment of his imagination. According
to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran today is poorer than it was
before the mullahs seized power. This is why Iran, which had never been a
country of mass immigration, has become the source of “the biggest brain drain
in history”, according to IMF.

The
Khomeinist leadership is in a state of panic. It fears that it, too, may find
itself on the path of the tsunami of change.

-This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 02/09/2011
-Amir Taheri was born in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, and educated in Tehran, London
and Paris. He was Executive Editor-in-Chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran
(1972-79). In 1980-84, he was Middle East Editor for the Sunday Times. In
1984-92, he served as member of the Executive Board of the International Press
Institute (IPI)

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...